


strange lines and distances

by killaidanturner



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Season/Series 04, set after S4 EP 19
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-13 00:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9097513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: He doesn’t get to look into her eyes anymore, he doesn’t get to see that glint, that spark, the way he felt like he saw himself in her, like they were always meant to be intertwined.





	

Desperate. It’s a word that Oliver Queen is accustomed to, how it ebbs and flows it’s way through his life. 

 

Lian Yu. At first he was desperate to get home, desperate for his father to be alive, desperate to see Laurel. 

 

Desperation has a cause and effect and Oliver thinks that maybe if he payed more attention in school he would understand something about the science behind it. 

 

Despite five years and miles between him and Lian Yu, between him and Hong Kong, he still finds himself falling back to it, falling back to green. 

 

No one really understood that, partially because to this day he still can’t speak of the things he did, nor his time with Waller. Felicity knew, she always knew, she stood in front of him on multiple occasions until finally she said what she always knew, that he would always be alone. 

 

He remembers the first time he came back to Star City, hearing Felicity’s voice, how she amused herself walking around Queen Consolidated. He remembers that as the first time he felt any sense of happiness since the Queen’s Gambit. 

 

He held onto that, held onto her sweet tenor. He knew that he had no right, that her words that night were not meant for anyone to hear, especially him, but he knew deep down there was still a piece of him that was selfish and so this selfish thing he would keep. Her words echoing around in his mind during his darkest times. She was an anchor, one that wasn’t Laurel, or Thea. She was someone who didn’t have a history and heartache behind her. 

 

He should have known then that he would find a way to add her to his ever increasing list of heartache. 

 

“I don’t want to be a woman you love.” 

 

Because the women that Oliver Queen love live a life of lies, live a life of hurt, they hang onto promises and in a way Oliver understands why she never wanted that for herself. He understands what it feels like to want something helplessly to the point of recklessness. 

 

Even though she had said that months before, he still found a way back into her heart. This time he held on close, held on tight. At night he had wrapped his arms around her, spoke to her about wild flower fields and said that the way her hair fanned across the pillow smelled like them, sweet and drenched in too much sun. 

 

And she would turn in his arms and tell him about  achillea filipendulinaa, a golden yarrow flower, “it’s kind of funny, yarrow, arrow,” and he would smile, lean down and kiss her quiet, kiss her until her words were drowned out by his tongue.

 

It wasn’t enough, those late nights, how she spoke of Jupiter’s moon Callisto, “they thought it was dead but it might not actually be, like you.” He remembers her bathed in the lights of the city, their open window casting shadows across her features. How in the dark her nose took on a different slope, the angle of her jaw became more defined. How in any light she looked beautiful.

 

“And what is on this moon?” He would ask her anything just to hear her speak. 

 

“An ocean.” 

 

Even something four hundred million miles away can still feel like drowning. 

 

He plays these nights over in his mind, thinks about the things he could have done differently, what he could have done to keep her. 

 

She was right, he could have started with the truth. 

 

It was more than that thought. How can he explain that she made him feel not like any incarnation of Oliver Queen, not before Lian Yu, not after, but the Oliver Queen he was always meant to be. How does he say, you don’t make me forget my years of dark, my years of bullets and an intricate web of lies, instead you make me feel like I can be redeemed. 

 

There’s something in the back of his mind that says you can’t hold your redemption in the hands of another. 

 

_You can’t,_ deep down he knows that somewhere, but he supposes he still has things to learn. He just wishes Felicity were around to help show him the way. 

 

He thinks of the way she always stood in front of him, strong, yet gentle, and hopeful. How it looked like she was always on the edge, teetering, just waiting for him to make a decision. 

 

Oliver could have reached out, could have pulled her from that edge if he would have just told her about William but once again he made the wrong decision and looking back he can see her falling, slipping from his grasp. 

 

Felicity doesn’t just shut the door on them after that, she creates a fortress. He can’t really blame her, not when she already said that this is never what she wanted. 

 

He doesn’t get to look into her eyes anymore, he doesn’t get to see that glint, that spark, the way he felt like he saw himself in her, like they were always meant to be intertwined. 

 

Now all he has is a mirror and he can’t seem to stand his own reflection. 

 

He wonders what he used to look like to her, what all his scars must have looked like. He slowly traces them while he looks at his reflection, their raised up shape. The bags under his eyes are more prominent, dark and framing. 

 

He wonders what she could have ever saw in this. That no one could possibly love his darkest self.

 

It doesn’t just fall back to William, to his decision not to tell Felicity. Or he thinks it doesn’t until he remembers Barry telling him that time has a way of catching up. 

 

He wonders if in the past, in that other universe where they all passed, if the conversation went the same way. 

 

* * *

 

He takes his bike because the thought of being alone on the train to Central City is too much. He doesn’t know what he would do with his time, with his hands. He’s afraid if left alone for too long then he’ll reach for his phone, that he’ll scroll through old texts, look at pictures and think to himself that for all of Felicity’s smiles he never deserved one of them. 

 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to ask Barry, doesn’t know if this will even answer anything for him. He keeps his fists closed around the handles to his bike, knuckle white and clenched so hard it almost hurts. It’s easier for him to focus on the road like this, to focus on the blurring lines. 

 

All he can think of is that his life is filled with loss. He lost William, lost Laurel, lost Felicity. That the universe is stacked against him. 

 

Time has a way of catching up. 

 

Maybe that’s what all of this is. The timeline being disrupted. Maybe he was never meant to love Felicity at all, never meant to be a vigilante. 

 

_ I should have died on that island.  _

 

He immediately regrets the thought, can hear Felicity’s worried yet scolding voice if she were to hear such a thing from him. 

 

It’s hard not to feel that way, hard not to feel like everything's your fault when things keep slipping through your fingers no matter how hard you think you’re gripping. 

 

* * *

Barry is surprised to see him. More so because to Barry Allen the great Oliver Queen doesn’t need help. 

 

“It’s not,” Oliver stops, puts his hands in his pockets and looks down at the floor, at the scuff of wood by the entrance to the West house and wonders what sort of things the house has seen before he continues on. “It’s not a Star City problem, or an Arrow problem. It’s a me problem.” 

 

Barry starts rambling and instead of being annoyed Oliver can’t help but smile because he understands what Felicity saw in Barry, sees it himself, and can’t help but think of her, the nervous way her words would collide. 

 

They’re still standing in the doorway before Barry steps aside, “come in, I’m so sorry. I would have kept you there all night. I’m, I guess I’m just surprised is all.” 

 

“Why?” Oliver looks over his shoulder to ask as he walks into the living room.

 

“I just never thought that you needed advice, of any kind. You always seemed like you had things figured out.” 

 

Oliver wants to laugh, a sickening laugh that he feels bubbling in his throat. A laugh that says _ I got so good at lying that I even lied to myself.  _

 

He thinks that he could say something but realizes that he doesn’t know where to start. 

 

“I saw that your wedding was interrupted on the news, I-”

 

Oliver puts up his hand, a gentle way to cut Barry off. 

 

“It was a fake wedding.”

 

“Oh.” Barry wants to ask a million questions, can feel them all forming on the tip of his tongue. 

 

“There won't be a real one either.” 

 

It’s easier to tell Barry, to tell him what had happened. 

 

“Did you hear what she said the first time she left me? In the other timeline?” Oliver puts his hands together to prevent him from running them up and down his legs in nervous anticipation. 

 

“I might have really good hearing.” 

 

“I just want to know if it was the same, if the conversation happened the same or if I did anything differently.” 

 

“I don't know if that’s a good idea Ollie. Time doesn’t-”

 

Oliver stands up quickly, feels himself starting to boil, darkness creeping up in him. “I get it, time doesn’t like being messed with. Time doesn’t like a lot of things, but Barry, I need to know if it happened the same way. I need to be able to move on the way she has.” 

 

A lie, he feels it as it slips out. How naturally it comes. As if he could ever imagine a life where he moves on from her. No one seems to understand that he has tucked pieces of himself away in her and he will never get them back. 

 

Barry thinks if he has a weakness then its empathy because when he sees Oliver, really looks at him, the tired lines around his eyes and the subtle tremor to his hands he thinks that this is the only way that he can help. 

 

He tells Oliver about the fight outside of the farm house, how Felicity looked up at Oliver that night and told him how he would always be alone. 

 

“And I am. At night, it used to be so hard to get her to sleep sometimes, she was always thinking of a way to improve everyone’s gear, or working on a case. I would wake up and there would be the glow from her tablet illuminating her and god, Barry, I even miss that. I hate how much I miss it and I know I deserve this, know that I deserve the pain of it but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

 

Barry takes a breath before he sits back down, his hands folded before he leans forward a bit to look at Oliver. 

 

“You keep saying all these things about deserving, and I just don’t think that it’s a good way to look at things.” 

 

“I should have died six years ago. You were right, this is just time finding a way to make things right.” 

 

Barry feels his heart ache, feels it the way that he does when he looks at Iris and knows that he will never be able to be with her despite what the future says. 

 

“Why did you come here Oliver?” 

 

“I just told you.” 

 

“Why did you really?” 

 

Oliver takes a breath, runs his hands through his hair and looks up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I guess you were my last hope.” He thinks again of the word desperation and wonders if maybe his destiny is more so tied with this word than anything else. 

 

Desperate to do it all over again, desperate to tell her the truth, desperate to have those long nights back, to see again the way her hair falls down her back, how she pushes up her glasses when they’re falling down her nose. Desperate for the graveyard of his skin to no longer house ghosts. Desperate for her honey lips on his once more. Desperate, desperate, desperate. 

 

Barry really wants to make a Star Wars reference but he bites the inside of his cheek. He goes through a hundred different scenarios in the span of .0048 seconds and tries to think of an outcome for Oliver. 

 

“I told you that time shouldn’t be messed with.” Barry speeds things up, he talks so fast that Oliver can’t hear him, so fast that Oliver hasn’t even blinked. “You don’t know what it’s like, to go back. It’s not a gift. There’s some sick tragedy in a piece of paper being exactly where you left it, knowing that the terrible things that happened haven’t happened yet and that no matter how hard you try they’re doing to eventually. You don’t know that feeling of seeing something untouched knowing that in a different life you touched it. That in a different life it came out unscathed by your actions. It’s not just people that get affected, its objects. Literally, everything.”

 

Exhale. Blink. 

 

Oliver looks back at Barry. “I know.” But he thinks that he’s defied death for too long, defied destiny, fate, the stars, whatever you want to call it, that maybe he can do it one last time. 

 

“But you still came here.” 

 

“I’d rather you tell me no to my face.” But Barry can read between the lines when Oliver is speaking and knows he means,  _ I’d rather stop dreaming that I can have a different life.  _ Because if anyone knows anything about dreaming of a different life, it’s Barry Allen. 

 

Barry quirks his lips, does a half smile. “You came all this way, let's go get dinner.” 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
